September 28
Today it’s raining and I’m feeling a wee bit bleh. I’m hanging out with the dog when I could be installing solar panels or memorizing Dalai Lama quotes. Saving the planet somehow.
I’ve just come back from seeing Jerry Springer: The Opera. (What a title!)
I would not have seen it if my son hadn’t been in it. Why? Cause I carry too much condescending, arrogant judgement about Jerry Springer, whose show I have never seen. (How you come to judge something you’ve never seen is a topic for another day.)
It was fantastic. Fabulous, complex music, lovely theatre (Hart House in Toronto), great energy, and very funny writing.
(My favourite phrase was a riff on Talk to the Hand. It came from Jesus, who said, Talk to the stigmata. Isn’t that beautiful?!)
Nothing was safe. Not religion, sex, relationships, not the meaning of life. It was as vulgar as vulgar can be. Great hunks of it coming from my kid’s mouth.
And just when it couldn’t get any lower, it culminated in a line from a song that went like this: Everything human is holy.
Everything human is holy.
It made me think about how often I judge my own behaviour (forget Jerry Springer) to be worthwhile or not, to be productive or not, to be enough or not.
Installing solar panels is holy. Dalai Lama quotes are holy. But so is every mistake I’ve ever made and every mistake I will make in the future. So is every frustrating thing I have not resolved in myself. So is every unpleasing fact of my existence.
So today, just for a lark, i’m making peace with what is. Just glad to be here and be as human as mothers who sleep with their daughters’ best friends, fathers who used to be mothers, or Jesus, who is gay, as it turns out.
Many thanks to Jerry Springer and to Jerry Springer: The Opera.
Life is good.
Thanks for the conversation,
kristin